Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Penguin Books (1993), Edition: Reprint, 288 pages
Description
It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of the twentieth century, and an attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, "The White Hotel" is a modern classic of enduring emotional power that attempts nothing less than to reconcile the notion of individual destiny with that of historical fate.
Media reviews
What ''The White Hotel'' sets out to perform, clearly, is the diagnosis of our epoch through the experience of an individual; and the highest praise I can give it is that for some time it comes close to achieving that goal. Indeed, the opening sections of the novel are so authoritative and
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imaginatively daring that I quickly came to feel I had found the book, that mythical book, that would explain us to ourselves. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member Carole114
This is the story of a single life, both unremarkable and extraordinary.
The novel starts out with an erotic poem, goes on to talk of Freud and Jung and psychoanalysis, incorporates European history during WWII, and follows the life course of a woman musician in Vienna. The book reads a bit like a
The novel starts out with an erotic poem, goes on to talk of Freud and Jung and psychoanalysis, incorporates European history during WWII, and follows the life course of a woman musician in Vienna. The book reads a bit like a
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mystery,is part psychological, and of course, refers back to the initial poem. It is so hard to pin down this story. The ending, though it creeps up on you, inexorably, is shattering. Show Less
LibraryThing member MrLloydSpandex
The first few chapters felt like an excuse to write deeply graphic sexual fantasies, but reading on it all ties in. I really liked this book, I need to read it again now I know where it leads so I can get the full picture. My favourite book I've read this year.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
This is a story of eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. The book's first three movements consist of the erotic fantasies and case-history of one of the novelist's conception of Sigmund Freud's female patients, overlapping, expanding, and
Ultimately it is a vision of the wounds of the 20th century, and an attempt to heal them.
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gradually turning into almost normal narrative. But then the story takes a different course with the convulsions of the century, and becomes a testament of the Holocaust, harrowing and chillingly authentic. Only at the end does the fantasy element return, pulling together the earlier themes into a kind of benediction. One aspect that I found interesting was the use of the epistolary form with postcards from the fictional hotel guests included as part of the narrative.Ultimately it is a vision of the wounds of the 20th century, and an attempt to heal them.
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LibraryThing member otterley
It's funny how sometimes you end up doing things in themes - I read this book shortly after watching David Cronenburg's new film about Freud and Jung, and also after reading Primo Levi - so Judaism and psychoanalysis coming together in this book which centres around a female singer, a 'case study'
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of Freud, and a central European/Russian Jew in the 1930s. It's a fascinating read; it starts with two different meditations on feminine sexuality and the erotic, very circular and repetitive, capable of reinterpretation in a myriad of different ways, by Freud and also by Anna the subject - but who owns the analysis - the analyst or the analysand - the male authority or the female subject? The more linear narrative, that takes us into the ghetto and the slaughterhouse, into the dark heart of man's inhumanity, brings fantasy against a dark reality of group psychosis. Is analysis and self knowledge just an egotistical indulgence? Show Less
LibraryThing member christinejoseph
Freud + young woman patient; 20 years analysis
tragic
It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of our century, and an
tragic
It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of our century, and an
Show More
attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, The White Hotel is a modern classic of enduring emotional power that attempts nothing less than to reconcile the notion of individual destiny with that of historical fate. Show Less
LibraryThing member isabelx
She stumbled over a root, picked herself up and ran on blindly. There was nowhere to run, but she went on running. The crash of foliage grew louder behind her, for they were men and could run faster. Even if she reached the end of the wood, there would be more soldiers waiting to shoot her, but
The book starts with an erotic poem supposedly written by one of Sigmund Freud's patients, Anna G, followed by his case file on her. In her fantasies, Anna and her lover are staying at a white hotel on the shores of a lake, and although they see it as a cosy place to retreat from the world, it is a place of danger, with their fellow guests dying in various disasters in and around the hotel. the poem is followed by Freud's (fictional) case history of Anna G. written in 1919 when she consults him because of terrible pain that has no physical cause.
The story of Lisa Erdman (the Anna G of the case history) is picked up again in 1929, when she is now more or less cured, but still unmarried and averse to having children, and as the years went by I realised that her visions and psychosomatic pains were actually premonitions of terrible events yet to come. A readable and moving book with a sympathetic heroine.
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these few extra moments of life were precious. Only they were not enough. There was no escape except to become one of the trees. She would gladly give up her body, her rich life, to become a tree, frozen in humble existence, the home of spiders and ants. So that the soldiers would rest their rifles against the tree, and feel in their pockets for cigarettes. They would shrug away their mild disappointment, saying, One did not matter, and they would go home; but she, a tree, would be filled with joy, and her leaves would sing her gratitude to God as the sun set through the trees around her. The book starts with an erotic poem supposedly written by one of Sigmund Freud's patients, Anna G, followed by his case file on her. In her fantasies, Anna and her lover are staying at a white hotel on the shores of a lake, and although they see it as a cosy place to retreat from the world, it is a place of danger, with their fellow guests dying in various disasters in and around the hotel. the poem is followed by Freud's (fictional) case history of Anna G. written in 1919 when she consults him because of terrible pain that has no physical cause.
The story of Lisa Erdman (the Anna G of the case history) is picked up again in 1929, when she is now more or less cured, but still unmarried and averse to having children, and as the years went by I realised that her visions and psychosomatic pains were actually premonitions of terrible events yet to come. A readable and moving book with a sympathetic heroine.
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LibraryThing member amydross
A strange, dream-like book, but nevertheless oddly compelling. A large chunk of the book is devoted to an imagined case study meant to be written by Freud, and it was almost as fascinating as one of his actual case studies -- though really, a little too perfect, but I imagine that's inevitable, in
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a fiction. Still, I loved the way this story kept circling back over the events of the heroine's life and the psychoanalytic interpretations of her symptoms, denying the reader (and Freud) the satisfaction of an easy solution to the "puzzle". Towards the end of the book, the characters (minus Freud) all get sent to Hitler's camps, which I suppose makes a point about the fruitlessness of psychoanalysis in a crazy, cruel world? But I could have done without it. Show Less
LibraryThing member kjsmulvihill
Compare to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
LibraryThing member argente17
This is an astonishing book. It tells the story of a young woman who suffers from debilitating pains in her womb, and mysterious dreams. She becomes a patient of Sigmund Freud, who tries to unravel her dreams and discover the source of her problems. It's not always an easy read, and you may begin
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to wonder where it is all leading. However, do not put this book down - it is well worth persevering. As you read about the dreams you become mesmerised, and before you know it, you are caught up in events that take you by surprise, leaving you deeply moved. I consider The White Hotel to be the most powerful novel of the last century. Go out and get it now - you will never forget it. Show Less
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
This is a rough book to get through, and one which won't fail to surprise you at various points if you can make it through the journey. It works to offend your sensibilities on various levels, and I think that for most readers it succeeds on some level. Still, the conception and the art of the work
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are undeniable, and it's certainly worth a read for writers and for readers who want something out of the ordinary, or even simply something striking. It's a fast read, but it's also hard to take at various points, and not one I'd ever feel comfortable recommending to a reader who's not actively seeking something provocative and/or newly striking. It's artfully done, and worthwhile, but it's also not something I'll be able to force myself to come back to. Show Less
LibraryThing member abirdman
Deep, heady, intoxicating, erotically charged, and finally nearly impossibly sad. This book was a huge best seller, but it has none of the downsides of that. It's intellectially engrossing and the characters are fully formed. This book could be an allegory of the almost simultaneous apex and
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collapse of European culture in the 1930's. This book is unforgettable. Show Less
LibraryThing member brendaough
I loved this book from the minute I picked it up and began reading the first "version" of Anna's story. It is a very compelling novel about Freud, his patient Anna, dreams, the Holocaust and heaven.....yes, it's all there. Although there was some controversy over the writer's use of another's words
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to describe the massacre at Kiev in 1941, I believe the book stands by itself as a great piece of literature. It's certainly a story I will never forget and would be a book that I would consider rereading. Show Less
LibraryThing member ffortsa
This is a tough book. Partly, it is the 'post-modern' style of the narrative, wherein actual events and non-fictional material is interlaced within the writing. Partly, it is the intense sexual fantasy in the (supposed) sessions between the main character and Freud that might put people off, and
And all along there is love, in various forms, and death, natural and otherwise. Ultimately, we follow the main character all the way from trauma and pain and love to barbarous death, and something more.
An excellent novel for those open to its method and frankness.
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the knowledge we have of the doom awaiting those who lived between the wars of the 20th century. Or it might have been the iterative views of what is portrayed, each one changing the one before like a psychological Rashamon. How can we trust the narrator? How can we trust the portrayal of Freud, just reaching his ideas about the connection between love and the death wish?And all along there is love, in various forms, and death, natural and otherwise. Ultimately, we follow the main character all the way from trauma and pain and love to barbarous death, and something more.
An excellent novel for those open to its method and frankness.
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LibraryThing member jonfaith
Harold at Twice-Told raved about this novel, but it was Emir Kusturica's interets in bringing it to the screen which inspired my reading. I felt it contrived and flat, though the premise is engaging: the prescience of hysteria. The bits that Thomas stole are the best in the book: shame on you,
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Donald. Show Less
LibraryThing member kmulvihill
Compare to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
LibraryThing member lriley
Apparently parts of D. M. Thomas's 'The White Hotel' were lifted from Yuri Kuznetsov's 'Babi Yar'. I read 'Babi Yar' some time ago and no longer have a copy--that section that pertains to that in 'The White Hotel' certainly did give me a kind of deja vu experience. Anyway there was some controversy
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over it and apart from that (which IMO detracts from it a bit) 'The White Hotel' is still an extraordinary book. Taken from the case history of Lisa Erdman (in the first sections using as an alias or doppelganger 'Anna G.) an early patient of Sigmund Freud the book explores her case of sexual hysteria and links it to her own self loathing and self destructiveness. The scenes described between Erdman and Freud are often fascinating--taking her back into her childhood and also into the world of dreams and symbols. Erdman's erotic dreams come to her almost as visions of a catastrophic future--they are in fact much more than sexual in nature but also premonitions of death and destruction and as we find out later her own death at Babi Yar is a confirmation of one of them in which she is buried alive. Freud eventually is able to help her back into her normal life and she resumes her career as an opera singer. Eventually she remarries and settles in the Ukraine. Her husband is arrested by the Soviets and she and her stepson as mentioned above will be murdered by the Nazi's. The novel doesn't quite end on that tragic note however. Her stepson Kolya and her had risen from bed on the last day of their lives with the idea that the Germans were going to allow for a train to take them to Palestine--and so the last chapter is like a dream that Lisa takes with her into and beyond her death--into the same Palestine of the train journey where she once again meets with and/or talks to all those who had played a part in her life and where she comes finally to terms with all of that which had caused her so much grief in her lifetime. All in all it's an excellent book and is well concieved and the prose is fluid and at times veers towards poetic. The supposed borrowing from Kuznetsov's book has dropped it sligtly in my rating but it is a book I'd have no qualms about recommending. Show Less
LibraryThing member Danacn
It's not always an easy read at the beginning but don’t let this stop you. This is a book that won't fail to surprise you at various points. It is a very compelling novel about Freud, his patient Anna/Lisa, dreams, the Holocaust and heaven.
It is interesting, erotically charged, and very sad.
It is interesting, erotically charged, and very sad.
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Apparently parts of the book were lifted from Yuri Kuznetsov's 'Babi Yar'. Taken from the case history of Lisa Erdman (in the first sections using as an alias Anna G.) an early patient of Sigmund Freud the book explores her case of sexual hysteria and links it to her own self loathing and self destructiveness. The scenes described between Erdman and Freud are often fascinating--taking her back into her childhood and also into the world of dreams and symbols. Erdman's erotic dreams come to her almost as visions of a catastrophic future--they are in fact much more than sexual in nature but also premonitions of death and destruction and as we find out later her own death at Babi Yar is a confirmation of one of them in which she is buried alive. Freud eventually is able to help her back into her normal life and she resumes her career as an opera singer. Eventually she remarries and settles in the Ukraine. Her husband is arrested by the Soviets and she and her stepson as mentioned above will be murdered by the Nazi's. The novel doesn't quite end on that tragic note however. Her stepson Kolya and her had risen from bed on the last day of their lives with the idea that the Germans were going to allow for a train to take them to Palestine--and so the last chapter is like a dream that Lisa takes with her into and beyond her death--into the same Palestine of the train journey where she once again meets with and/or talks to all those who had played a part in her life and where she comes finally to terms with all of that which had caused her so much grief in her lifetime. All in all it's an excellent book. Show Less
LibraryThing member tzelman
The peace of psychoanalytic therapy and the horror of Babi Yar combine in the experience of a sympathetic woman
LibraryThing member Cecrow
Sigmund Freud attempts to treat a woman suffering from hallucinations that set explicit sexual acts in the foreground while mass death events are occurring in the background (drowning, fire, falling, buried alive). Getting into this novel is a bit of an uphill climb, since it's front-loaded with
There's a bit of a trick going on here, first hinted at and then increasingly evident (if you know your history, or you've just been reading the LT tags). The rising tension is mostly due to predicting what's coming rather than the plotting, although the hallucination element adds some ominousness. Its climax includes the most gut-wrenching description of this particular scene I've ever read, although I understand Thomas has Anatoly Kuznetsov to thank for its power. The final section ends on a mercifully happier note, the only one available.
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the hallucinations part but, on the far side of that, Sigmund goes to work as he tries to rationalize what's been shared, looking for the symbols he can tie into his patient's life and history. There's a bit of a trick going on here, first hinted at and then increasingly evident (if you know your history, or you've just been reading the LT tags). The rising tension is mostly due to predicting what's coming rather than the plotting, although the hallucination element adds some ominousness. Its climax includes the most gut-wrenching description of this particular scene I've ever read, although I understand Thomas has Anatoly Kuznetsov to thank for its power. The final section ends on a mercifully happier note, the only one available.
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Subjects
Awards
Booker Prize (Longlist — 1981)
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 1981)
World Fantasy Award (Nominee — Novel — 1982)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1981
Physical description
7.7 inches
ISBN
9780140231731